Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow by Hot Wheels

[SMS88]

And finally, a line-up of the 10 basic models.

DSC_1534s.jpg

Cheers,
R

Great photo, wonderful colours + neat table , and who would have guessed that the Hong Kong team engineering perfectionism we all know from the rear loading Beach Bomb v side loading Beach Bomb was also shown with the Rolls!

[GHOSTHUNTER]

BLAST IT!! got home this past Weekend to sort out some more models to bring to my Father's house and the 'HOT WHEELS' are not in my '3-inchers' box, how mad I was to discover this and can only think of the last time they were out of the box was for some pictures, possibly the pictures posted here in this thread. They have clearly been put in a temporary box.

Will try again soon, sorry for that Ritchie.

Ghosty.

[ritchie]

BLAST IT!! got home this past Weekend to sort out some more models to bring to my Father's house and the 'HOT WHEELS' are not in my '3-inchers' box, how mad I was to discover this and can only think of the last time they were out of the box was for some pictures, possibly the pictures posted here in this thread. They have clearly been put in a temporary box.

Will try again soon, sorry for that Ritchie.

Ghosty.

That's ok Ghosty. I experienced the similar in the past and it was indeed frustrating. I'll stay tuned. BTW, you mentioned about the pink with ivory interior. Do you have the model or an image of it? because I talked to a few US collectors about it recently and they're also surprised to learn about this variant..

many thanks,
r

[GHOSTHUNTER]

Yes Ritchie, I can do that without too much mucking about...!!

Here is a section of a page from my special 'Hot Wheels' issue of my magazine, hopefully it is large enough here for you to see the two 'Pink' issues, Ivory seats above, dark Brown seats below.



GHOSTHUNTER.

[ogedei_voidoid]

Hard for me to see the int color ghosty, but it looks like a white/ivory int.

Going through an old list I can add a few other to Ritchies list

All Yellow & white int
All Pink & white int

[ritchie]

Yes Ritchie, I can do that without too much mucking about...!!

Here is a section of a page from my special 'Hot Wheels' issue of my magazine, hopefully it is large enough here for you to see the two 'Pink' issues, Ivory seats above, dark Brown seats below.

GHOSTHUNTER.

thanks ghosty! but do you have other images for the ivory interior? because frankly speaking i'm not very convinced by this image because it kinda look like dark brown interior under sunlight or lighting from certain angle, resulted the ivory illusion which you could got deceived. May be i'm wrong, but if there're images from different angles it'd be great.

r

[ritchie]

Hard for me to see the int color ghosty, but it looks like a white/ivory int.

Going through an old list I can add a few other to Ritchies list

All Yellow & white int
All Pink & white int

Thanks! so you also have the pink & white int from your old list! i assume it's also from one of the US forums too?

[ritchie]

i further compared various other casting differences such as trunk line, wheels, etc and the result is interesting but strange.

bearing wheels vs capped wheels


trunk line vs no trunk line


and the below table summarized the findings together with the engine and inner arch areas

hwssCastAll.jpg (80.82 KiB) Viewed 2256 times

In the table,
B = bearing wheels
C = capped wheels
TL = trunk line
NTL = No trunk line
OTL = Obscure trunk line (the trunk line can hardly be seen but still some traces of it)
Blocked = blocked inner front wheel-arch area
Clear = clear inner front wheel-arch area
Long = long engine
Short = short engine

It's known that bearing wheels are used on early releases. So those models/variants on the list using bearing wheels are with early casting.

It's noted that models using bearing wheels all have trunk lines. So it's safe to assume that early casting have trunk line. Gradually the tool/die was degraded with use so the trunk line became obscure. And later the trunk line was completely gone probably because the cast is modified or could just worn out from the tool. (It's also noted that the famous purple prototype has this trunk line.)

And it's noted that the long engine is associated with early casting while short engine is associated with later casting. Ghosthunter was correct and my hypothesis on earlier thread was wrong about the engine.

And from the list we've got 6 combinations:
Blocked / Long / TL / B (first casting)
Blocked / Long / TL / C
Blocked / Long / NTL / C
Clear / Long / TL / B
Clear / Short / TL / C
Clear / Short / NTL / C (last casting)

It's clear that the first casting should be the "Blocked / Long / TL / B" （blocked inner acrh area / long engine / trunk line / bearing wheels) (the 4 models highlighted in blue)
and the last casting should be the "Clear / Short / NTL / C" (clear inner arch area / short engine / no trunk line / capped wheels)

And the middle 4 combinations puzzled me. Can't established how the casting evolved. We have trunk line casting associated with both long engine and short engine. The no-trunk-line cast is also associated with both long and short engines. One reason I can think of is that there are more than one die/tool. Another possibility could be that the car body and the engine was made separately and then soldered together but i inspected the model and this is not valid they should be one piece made. So I really don't know. Any suggestions?

r

[ritchie]

Apart from the above i noted other minor casting differences between early and late castings such as the side light (early: rough; late: a sharp rectangle) and the tail line on the left side of the trunk area (early: clear line; late: the line is gone probably due to die/tools degraded with use) .

In addition, there is a number upside down inside the bonnet. Number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is noted. Below is an image illustrating different numbers.


And a similar table is made to summarize different bonnet numbers found on different models.

hwssCastBonnet2.jpg (40.61 KiB) Viewed 2257 times

Two numbers in one cell simply means that from the models I have on this particular variant, two different numbers are noted. And it's possible that more bonnet numbers for a particular variant existed.

We can see same numbers (eg. 2,5) are on both early castings and later castings. So it looks like the bonnet number is unrelated to the time of casting. The 5 bonnets are randomly applied to the models.

r

[GHOSTHUNTER]

Great stuff Ritchie, we are slowly sorting it all out, your pictures are very good and your continuing observations are very valid.

Just a few points, yes the tooling does show severe signs of ware on this model and the fact the tooling was not designed to very tight tolerances in the first place as evidenced along the front and rear wing lines on many examples.

The under-bonnet tooling numbers sadly do not help in dating these models, but their position does and you show both versions in the above picture with the two models at left of picture. The Blue model has the circle further back on the bonnet casting than the model next to it, telling us this is a later bonnet casting and helps to confirm more than one set of tooling was used for the bonnet, if not the whole body of this model.

The other longer number is as you are probably aware, the catalogue number for this model and only ties this component to the Rolls-Royce during production, it does not tell us anything else.

GHOSTHUNTER.